OTC: Riley's Art Gallery

I've seen lots of ideas in the bloggy world lately for organizing kids art. I was leaning toward making a wire line hanger down in the playroom and I still might do that in her bedroom, but I couldn't help utilizing something that I had on hand too.

Many years ago before we were married TG and I got two furbabies. Like any good mother, I took lots of photos of them. Then I took it a step further and I bought a giant collage poster frame to put them in. It used to hang in the spare bedrooms at our apartment and then our townhouse in Charlotte, but it's been using up storage space for the last five years. I just couldn't bear to part with it.

Until last week when I had spent a good part of the day trying to wrangle Riley's artwork. Later that day I went down to the garage to get a file folder for all the art, I spied the frame and the lightbulb went on.

Before...


So first I carefully removed all the pictures of my pups and stored them in my photo archives.

During...


Then I took pictures of all of Riley's artwork I had on hand and I printed them out at Walgreens via Snapfish. I tried to pick a mixture of different art mediums for the final product and I affixed them to the frame's poster.

After!


I hung it in the playroom above our IKEA futon with my laser level (best Home Depot purchase of my year).

This did take me about an hour to get done, but Riley's reaction made it all worth it. The morning after I did it she walked past it, then without a word did an about face and stood there studying it for a moment. When she realized what it was she said, "Oh Mommy, this to me?" "Wook, that's my pitchers!"

Her appreciation plus the cost for it was priceless, but just how much you ask?

33 photo opening collage frame: $0 on hand
33 prints from Walgreens: $6

A personal and whimsical piece of art for our playroom for $6??? Eat that PB wire hanger, although I'm still going to use you as inspiration for my own knock off.